Rises out of ancient earth,
destroyed and sprouted again
in the same spot for centuries,
descendant of the original root lineage
of the Bodhi Tree planted in 288 BC,
in Bodh Gaya, India,
the body of Gaia,
the breast and belly of Mother Earth,
sprawling arms of divine sacred fig-bearing fingers
and leaves that wave like beating hearts in the wind.

It is said that Buddha sat underneath the Bodhi Tree,
a willing Lotus,
staring with unblinking eyes at the tree for seven whole days,
reciprocal energy exchange of gratitude and love
flowing back and forth between his Glorious Heart
and every heart-shaped leaf that waved the flag of Beauty in front of him,
and seated under the shade of Nature’s overarching hands,
he achieved the state of Heaven inside Him, Enlightenment,
Nirvana coursing through Siddhartha’s soul, and everything that surrounded him was bathed in the Golden Light of His consciousness.

A 12 acre Buddhist Temple has been built around the Bodhi tree,
Kings and Queens through the ages have revered the spot as Sacred,
the Holiest Buddhist Shrine,
pilgrims walk the miles of their experience and
traverse the sands of lifetimes to sit underneath its Holy branches,
staring at the bark, swaying with the leaves in meditation,
the heavy limbs now supported by beams holding them up from underneath,
as the pilgrims fall to the feet of the foliage,
wishing they were better men.

On Sunday, there were bomb blasts,
10 predawn explosions, premeditated detonations that rocked the walls
and shattered the windows of the Mahabodhi Temple,
damaged stones that literally carried Buddha’s footprint,
>where the floating orange-robed monks burn incense and<
pray daily for the salvation of humanity.
10 gas cylinders, filled with ball bearings and nails,
were planted like poisoned seeds around the temple
under the sheath of night’s cover,
and, as if the light of sunrise lit their fuses,
10 explosions were the morning salutations to the Jewel in the Lotus

Om Mani Padme Hum.
The orange robes of two Tibetan monks stained blood red
with homemade shrapnel of nails ripping through their prayers.
The Temple was not too badly damaged, reports say,
maybe physically the damage was minimal,
but the sanctity of all that has been built in the vibrations
of that Mahabodhi Temple in the Other Worlds,
has been violated and cracked through the planes of existence.

The heart-shaped leaves of the Bodhi Tree are still shaking with shock,
feverishly beating hearts from a danger that was never expected,
hearts blast-blown across the ancient earth where Buddha once sat
to find that he and the earth were one, to see the Light of Man’s Soul.
Now, the Bodhi and the body of Peace bleed sadness
onto the springtimes of tomorrow.

Are Buddha’s golden ears and dangling earlobes
ringing and burning in the aftershock of this labeled terrorism?
Where do the prayers go when lifted up to the universe?

When the Tibetan prayer wheels spin in the frenzy and fury
of combined voices lifting up one intention to the Ethers,
what causes this backlash, what beckons this desecration?

Is nothing Holy?

The remains of El Paraiso,
a 5,000 year old pyramid in Lima, Peru,
100,000 tons of hand placed rocks built to the stars,
were knocked down and bulldozed by a building company
on the same day as the explosions at the Mahabodhi Temple.

Sunday.
On the day that all the Gods rested.

Men wielding land contracts and bulldozers
raped the Peruvian landscape of a ritual sacred space,
a ceremonial Temple of Fire,
where recently archeologists found remains
of shellfish, fruit, flowers, and grain
that were burned as offerings to something Higher,
the rising smoke of these offerings opening the Priests’ hearts
to the messages of the Land, the Sky, the Heavens.

The rising smoke of fruit burning, thousands of years ago,
replaced with the smoke of a sandstorm
blowing over the emptiness of what remains,
Paradise burned as an offering to the Gods of
Capitalism and Land Trafficking,
and the damage has been done,
and an ancient pyramid cannot be rebuilt, dust to dirt,
and only history left with an untold story.

On Sunday,
the Ethers of the Other Worlds
absorbed the sandstorm clouds of desolate Peruvian Sands
and smoke rising from Mahabodhi Temple Explosion Fires.

Is this our offering to the Gods?
Is this what we think of Nirvana?

I know that there are forces of Light
that are doing everything they can to pull Humanity
out of the spillage of darkness that we have been
swimming in for generations.

We are at a breaking point,
a tipping point in our
a tipping point in our Spiritual Evolution as a Planet.

Sunday was a day that added a few weights
to the dark side of the Universal scale,
but Monday the Temple reopened, and Pilgrims returned.

Monday the Peruvian Pyramid rocks were still there,
moved but not disintegrated,
the intentions of Priests infused in more widely disseminated stones.

Our Hearts focused in the direction of loveoutweigh any physical destruction,
and the leaves of the Bodhi Tree are
alive beating inside all of us, no matter what Gods we follow.

We are of the earth,
we are ancient roots,
we are opening tree limbs and sacred fig fingers stretching to the Heavens.

Nothing,
not explosions, not bulldozers,
nothing,
can stop us from reaching
the God Inside.

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About
Kai Coggin

Kai Coggin is full-time poet and freelance writer born in Bangkok, Thailand, raised in Southwest Houston and currently a blip in the 3 million acre Oachita National Forest in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She is a former 9th and 10th grade English teacher, who took her students outside for poetry and drum circles on the lawn and built a life-size balcony and meter-stick-aluminum-foil-wrapped swords in her classroom to teach Romeo and Juliet. Other teachers wondered, but the students learned and loved her. Kai believes that learning is a personal journey for everyone, that cannot be constricted and confined by the classifications and labels of standardized testing. She strives to change the paradigm of education as a whole. In Houston, despite (or because of) her radical methods, she was recognized as Teacher of the Year, District Teacher of the Year, and competed for Regional Teacher of the Year against 5 out of 85,000 teachers. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A&M University and a degree from the school of Hard Knocks. Kai knows that words hold the potential to create monumental and global change and she uses her words like a sword of beauty. She can be found every Wednesday at a local dive reading her poems at an Open Mic. You can find her work at skailight.tumblr.com or reach out to her on Facebook. Her first book of poetry will be out in 2014.